SANEM and the editor’s desk wishes its well-wishers and readers a “Happy New Year”! This January 2019 issue of Thinking Aloud presents four articles based on the panel discussion organized by SANEM and UN-ESCAP on “Emerging Labour Markets and Employment Challenges in South Asia in the Context of SDGs” in the second day of the three-day long 60th Labour Economics Conference of The Indian Society of Labour Economics in IGIDR, Mumbai. The first article “Labour Market and Employment Challenges in Bangladesh in the context of SDGs” analyses six major challenges and identifies the policy options. These challenges are the creation of jobs (the quantity), ensuring decent jobs (the quality), acceleration of economic growth and economic diversification, increasing female labour force participation, enhancing youth employment, and raising the productivity of labour. The second article titled “Structural change, employment and occupational mobility in Indian labour market” explores whether structural change towards in production and trade towards more services has any significant impact on employment and inter-generational occupational mobility in India using three rounds of NSSO data for the years 1999-2000, 2004-05, and 2009-10. The samples include those who are a part of the workforce and are not attending any educational institution and father-son pairs who report their principal industry as well as their principal occupation. It appears that more than 55% of the sons are employed in the same industry as their fathers for the period from 1999-2000 to 2009-10, indicating persistence in occupational choice. The third article titled “Patterns and determinants of labour force participation of elderly population in Sri Lanka” investigates the determinants of elderly labour force participation in Sri Lanka, and examines whether these factors vary across gender and age categories of elderly. The fourth article titled “The job creation challenge in Nepal” investigates the effects of work-related out-migration on the entrepreneurial activities of left-behind family members. The final page draws attention to the events that took place in the month of December 2018.
